Going With You
by J. Finch
Summary: Samara visits Shepard in his cabin for a talk.  My first foray into something romantic, so go easy.  Reviews are always welcome.


**AN: This is in Raw, Unedited format. I'm currently looking for a beta reader for this and other future Mass Effect stories. If you're interested, please contact me via email with your beta information. Thank you.**

**Edit: Thanks to Anon for the Saren/Saron thing. Thanks to Silent also for spotting that typo. Damn them all, thought I got them during post-edits.  
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Silence permeated the darkness of his cabin, the dim glow of light from his fish tank casting an unearthly glow across the room. In his hand sat a half-full glass, it's contents dark, alcoholic, black in the shadows of the room. It was from earth, a distant and forgotten homeworld to his people, one that meant less to him than the word itself. Such irony that he cared so little for his home, his people, given just who he was ensnared to, just what he'd damned himself to. Impossible tasks set by impossible people. People like him, he reflected bitterly.

The irony burned worse than the rotgut alcohol.

Here he was, the illustrious, unflappable Commander John Michael Shepard, the first human Spectre, the hero of Feros, savior of the Citadel and defender of the Council. The veteran of Horizon, the one who fought a Reaper and won, the man who slew Saren and survived Akuze.

The last colonist of Mindoir.

The one who'd sentenced his lover to death on Virmire.

Who'd done such horrible things in the name of preserving the galaxy.

The man who died at the hands of the Collectors, only to return once again to pick up the flag he'd dropped.

The man without a soul.

The man forsaken by heaven and hell.

The slave.

The lesser.

The broken.

Shepard could only chuckle at the thought, a sad, grating sound of broken dreams and old, rotten memories. That was what he was. Thirty one years old and damned for it, damned for living, and for coming back.

When Cerberus remade him, they filled him with cybernetics, chips, machines, the most advanced technologies available. L5x implants, internal tech boosters, gland boosters, and all other sorts of things. They had taken his shattered bones and bound them together again, taken his dead veins and filled them with blood once more, and forged his broken heart anew. They had enhanced every bit of him, every facet. Replaced all of the old, worn and damaged with the pristine, fresh and new.

But for all of their tinkering, all of their technology and advancements and enhancements, they had lost that which was all that mattered.

They had lost his soul.

They had committed Sin by bringing him back. They made him a puppet, a shell of a human being. No better than a Geth, just another automaton in an endless series of automatons.

They wanted a hero. He was what they settled for.

It made him weep.

It made him laugh.

Once he had believed in God, in a higher power. He had told Ashley as much in the past. 'No atheists in foxholes' he had said. And it was true, then. He had believed, needed to, because he needed to know that there was something more waiting for him, some great mercy, some great retribution for all of his pain, his suffering.

But there wasn't. He had died, and all he had seen was the inky blackness of nothing. No light, no God, no heaven or hell. Just... nothing.

No hope for salvation.

He took another sip of his poison, and savored the burn.

His old crew was mostly gone. Liara was a shadow, a monster wearing the skin of the innocent little girl he'd known. Kaiden was a bitter fool, tainted and worn down against the great cliff that was the Alliance. Wrex was digging his fingers through dirt under some helpless delusion that he could save his doomed race, and Ashley? Ashley was nothing but bones and dust.

His "new" crew was no better. A jaded idealist of a soldier, Jacob, deluded by his own self-absorbed desire for a greater "good". Miranda, a cold and calculating amalgamation of genetic tinkering wrapped in a shell of shallow superiority. Mordin was a senile sycophant, clinging to what little projects he could to justify his own existence, and Jack? The warden was right in describing her as nothing more than a bitter little ball of hurt, rage and hate. Kasumi and Zaeed we both ingrained in their own little worlds. The former wrapping herself in a cocoon of playful stupidity and the latter a broken human being who had only memories to justify his waste of a life.

Tali was the same little girl he had known back in the "good old days." She still thought that he was some great hero to be adored, a paragon of all that was right and good in the universe. She was so enamored with her illusion of him that she blinded herself to the sheer horror of what he'd had to do. Garrus, the self-righteous martyr was a cobbled together shade of the man he used to be. He'd let that stupidity and laziness burn out what little decency he'd had left and made him turn into just another gun-toting vigilante. John was almost certain that the Turian didn't even know what it was he fought for any more, or if he'd even seen himself turn into the kind of monster he'd sworn to fight.

This was not to mention Samara, of course. Poor, sad, lonely Samara. A broken woman by all accounts, ancient in a way that John couldn't begin to imagine and radiant and elegant and strong, so strong, for bearing what she had to do. She was hiding behind her code so much as any other crew member, letting it be her shield in the same way that Mordin let his science shield him. The same way that Garrus let his martyrdom shield him, and the same way that Thane let his delusions shield him. And Thane... Thane was a man wrapped up in his own hell of vivid memories. Barely enough of a person remained in his broken husk of a living being, a creature that had justified itself under the auspicious belief of some sort of duality between choice and action. Such a ridiculous notion, and it sickened him to even look at the man sometimes.

Because it was the same thing he saw in the mirror.

Oh, but what a tragedy it was, to force upon a mirror unto a man with no face.

That was what he was. "Shepard." The icon. The great illusion.

He let off a bitter chuckle. It was more a sob.

Sitting at his table, he drank deep of the liquor that burned his throat and drowned his mind in a blank numbness of emptiness.

He really did care for her. He damned himself for it, but he did. Samara, he meant. He had connected with her, fed off her fire to warm his own shell of a body, drank in her age and wisdom and let himself pretend to be human once more, just around her.

He had visited her many times, talked to her, thought of her, learned from her, more so than any other member of his crew, any other person he knew. He had let himself believe in the illusion of his own feelings for her, pretending that it wasn't more than some hormonal drive mixed in with the need to find someone he could confess his sins to. There had been much of that, and more. He had spent time with her, just sitting with her as she meditated, watching the stars. Using her in the same way so many others used him.

It disgusted him.

The way he had come to her, in his own, foolish way. How he had pushed her, wanted and needed her so desperately that he almost broke what she had made herself to be, before she rejected him and fled. After that, he came no more. He knew that she would not have him, and he understood why. He didn't blame her for it, and let the incident fade in the background so many weeks ago.

He had done what he'd needed to do. He'd let his crew close their books, end their tales and find what they needed. He'd lead them from place to place, planet to planet, bringing them what little faith they could find. Garrus and Sidonis. Tali and her father. Mordin and his assistant. Grunt and his stupid ritual. Zaeed and his revenge, and Kasumi and her old flame. He had brought Jacob his father, Miranda her sister. He had brought Jack her closure, and Samara her daughter.

He had brought them all the peace they needed. Tried to find more for himself, but that was far from forthcoming. No, people like him never got to enjoy happiness or peace for very long. Love was a fleeting dream, and even death couldn't give him an end.

He drank deeply and let the alcohol dull his mind.

His door opened. He glanced over.

"Samara." He nodded, and raised his glass in a shaky toast to her, even as tears fell from his glazed eyes. "To what do I owe this particular pleasure?"

She simply stared at him, her gleaming, azure eyes watching him as he shot back his glass, but took his bottle as he reached to fill it again. He pouted at her, slightly, and set the glass back onto the table before meeting her gaze. As always, her face was unreadable.

"So why are you here?" He asked again, this time his voice took a darker tone. Another damnation on Cerberus for whatever they put into his system that burned out intoxicants. It had saved his life on Omega. He sometimes wished it hadn't.

"I... came to check on you." She replied, her voice clipped. Her answer had no hesitation to it, but the words were veiled. Shepard lolled his head and gave a rotten laugh.

"Did you now? So checked you have, Justicar. Did you find what you came to see?" Shepard cracked off, giving her a dark smile that broke against the shadows of the room. Samara gave him a neutral stare, but didn't move.

In her mind, she knew that something was far from right here. It was more than obvious, just the most open display yet. She knew that he was hurting, that he had been, from what he had confided in her. He had shown her so much faith, so much concern and friendship and caring. He had always been there, to talk and joke and laugh, as he had with all of the crew. And deep down, she had accepted him for that, and only that.

She knew that he had always hid parts of himself from her, from everyone. Hid himself behind a wall of absolution, of faith and strength and power, and for all of their failings he let them leech from him that which he had so little to offer. She was ashamed to admit that she had taken part in it as much as anyone else. That she had taken from him that which he had only echoes of.

She remembered the stories that Tali or Garrus had told her and the rest of his team. She remembered the times that she had come to the mess, about the powerful Shepard, the hero and the legend, the paragon of truth, justice and the galactic way. She had seen him in action and knew that there were few embellishments to those stories. She had watched him carve his way through countless enemies to bring forth a peace that had been forgotten and a hope that had flickered and died an eternity ago.

He had helped her bring her daughter to an end, and then held her as she wept in the aftermath. He had listened to her tales as intently as she had when they were passed to her, showed her an interest and a curiosity that was refreshing and enlightening. He had let her be less than she needed to be, let her be weak and powerless and afraid. Let her mourn and in turn lighten her burden, lighten the pain of her curse. She had let him so close to her, with no thought as to what it would have meant to him, and when that all came crashing down, when he told her he loved her and wanted her and thought of her and dreamed of her, she had pushed him away. She treated him like a doll, like a security blanket, and once that illusion faded she was left with a man.

And she had pushed him away.

He'd never done that to her. Never let her fall, even when she was at her worst.

She had done such to him, and she never forgave herself for it. Nearly a thousand years of life, and in one of the few moments that truly mattered, she had let herself fail. Let herself panic and flail and forget who she was, what she was. She had acted like a fifty year old maiden and run from what she knew to be true, and it had broken him more perfectly than anything else she could have done.

And she knew it. She had seen him fall to his knees, alone in the starboard observation deck, from the corner of her eye as the doors slid shut. She had ignored his pain and left him there, forsaking him in favor of her own thoughts. When she'd returned he was gone, and she berated herself for what she'd done. He deserved better, and so much more than that. She wanted to talk to him, to make things better between them, but he never came back. When she saw him, it was always with the others, and far too public to even try to speak on any personal level. He didn't come back to talk, or to explain, or to let her explain.

He avoided her, and she knew it. She thought that he was angry with her for abandoning him, or that he as upset with her for pushing him away. But no, it was neither. Poor John, foolish John, feared making her uncomfortable. And nobody ever told her, nobody ever mentioned it, she just... knew. She had come to watch him, in those scant few times that they'd been together, albeit with others around and about. She had seen how careful he was to balance them, how patient he was, how much he hid and shelved anything he felt to accommodate them. She had watched him hide behind his mask and selflessly give his all to whatever it was they sought to gain, and over the weeks came to realize so many truths about the quiet, introverted leader that none questioned and all followed.

And she came to see that she'd never really known him, not the man. Just the legend. And from it she found the most overpowering desire to learn. EDI was more than willing to offer all she wanted to know. It was mostly public record, and one just had to ask what they wanted to know. She was surprised to find that nobody beyond herself ever gave these records any kind of real attention, just as much as it surprised the AI, insomuch as it could be surprised, to find someone taking interest in the information. They just skimmed the basics. Just the songs of his great accomplishments and summaries of his deeds. It was almost as if they were too afraid to dig deeper.

Again, that guilt ate at her. She had been so callous as to assume as much as anyone else had. She had believed that nobody so just and good and decent and self-sacrificing could have been anything but a saint. The truth had left her openly weeping on the ground.

The truth of what he was. An orphan, in every horrible sense of the word, made so at such a young age. For an Asari, a child was still such at forty. Shepard lost his family at age seven. Barely a babe in the eyes of her people, and all the more saddening. The truth of the reports were gut wrenching, to say the least. He had been found amidst the corpses of his parents, sitting on the ground, desperately trying to shovel their blood and brains back into their lifeless bodies. A nearby cupboard was hanging open nearby, where he'd hid and watched the Batarian slavers murder them, but not before thoroughly using his mother and torturing his father, and all the while crying for them to wake up.

She had read about how his entire unit was slaughtered on Akuze, his second family being torn apart while he fought for his life, seeing them consumed like cattle and rent asunder by the monstrous Thresher Maws. How his lover had been amongst them, an illicit relationship but one that had been forgiven in the wake of her death. How he'd later met with another survivor from that nightmare, a Corporal Toombs, who had been taken by the very organization that Shepard was now enthralled to and tortured to insanity, who had, upon meeting John, fell to his knees, said that the darkness never went away and proceeded to kill himself after he'd shot the last scientist responsible for the massacre.

How he'd fallen in love with another of his team while they hunted Saren, a soldier by the name of Ashley Williams, who had become his confidante and lover, and whom he'd been forced to sacrifice on Virmire to save his Lieutenant, believing he could save them both, and then failing so absolutely when they were forced to leave her behind, losing her in a flash of atomic fire, only to later meet with the Lieutenant on Horizon, and then be summarily dismissed and abused by said man, before being abandoned by him.

How he'd found that in his absence, his friends had moved on, had found lives, had no more time for him, all but Tali and Garrus, who had become such totally different people that he didn't know them any more. How they were his third family, and how they had all so readily vanished into the sands of time.

And she had wept for him, for his loss, so crushing it was. She had lost her daughter once, had been forced to kill her, and it had almost destroyed her. She couldn't imagine what it would be like to have to do it again and again. How it would so totally break her to face that again.

How she had thought him so strong at that point. And how she had been so wrong, now that she stood and saw him, slumped in his seat, bottle of the foulest alcohol she had ever smelled sitting half full on the table, a well-used glass, now empty, sitting before him and his broken smile and rusty laugh all that remained of the figurehead that she had thought him to be.

In that moment she damned herself for her inability to express herself.

"Yes, Commander. I have." She replied in her own, empty tone.

Shepard laughed at her, a full bodied sound that grated on the walls. His hand swung out in a sloppily grandiose gesture and gave her a cold smile.

"And are you satisfied, oh Justicar?" He asked, almost hysterically. Samara simply looked at him, and the smallest shimmer of something he couldn't recognize passed through her eyes.

"I was... concerned for you, Com- Shepard." The Asari corrected herself at the last moment. When she called him Commander, he was the legend in her mind. She had to get away from that if she wanted to be honest with him.

"Really now? For me? I'm touched, Justicar, but really, I'm perfectly fine." His words were so perfectly delivered that she nearly believed him. There was no sign of that slurry or those hysterics in his voice, and his eyes were sharp as ever. Samara felt a pause at that. She knew he was hiding, and she wouldn't be lead so astray so easily. She was nearly a thousand years old, and she would not be taken in like a maiden.

"I know that not to be true, Shepard. I know you are in pain, and I am sorry that I had not-" Shepard's growl cut her off so completely that her mouth hung open with the half formed word choked in the air.

"You're... you... don't. Don't you dare, Samara." He snapped. There was no other word for it. The tone was so enraged, his eyes dark and burning, and for all of her power and experience, when she saw the flickering orange of his pupils, she felt such a great fear that it left her petrified. For a moment, she thought he would simply dive over that table and tear out her throat.

"I dare, Shepard." Came a voice not her own, laden with her ageless experience and wisdom, her strength and power. "I dare to face you now and reach out to you, and YOU dare to threaten me for it?" The words were heavy, and as if he were slapped, the Commander fell back. The fire was gone, and all that was left was a shell of a man. It was so heartbreaking, to see him like that. To see him crushed so easily by nothing but words.

"What do you want?" He whispered to her after a moment. Gone was the sharp edge, replaced with that old, rusty tone that laden him so heavily. Samara stepped forward and sat herself opposite him.

"To talk." She replied, simply, and he looked at her with a weary gaze.

"About what?" He replied, and glanced away. His back was slouched, burdened by the weight of a life gone so horribly wrong. The sight of him made Samara want to hold him and weep.

"A number of things, Shepard." She paused, and thought a moment before shaking her head. "Just... you John. I wish to talk about you." She hadn't often used his name. Almost never, really, always falling back to that age-old nickname that everyone used. Just another way to hide his mortality from their illusion.

"Me? Don't, Samara. Please. Chambers already tried that pseudo-psychological bullshit with me." He snorted, and Samara shook her head.

"Not that, not like that, please. John, I'm... I'm sorry." Her words were failing her, and she let her head fall. Damn her for her failings, and he his for making her like this.

"You don't have anything to be sorry about." He said, tiredly. He turned and stood, facing away from her, but otherwise didn't move.

She looked up at him, his face, his body, silhouetted against the dim light of the fish tank. She moved closer to him. He stepped away, but not before she caught his hand.

"I do! John, please... please, just listen." Something was in her voice, something that brought pause to him. Maybe it was her hand gripping his, or the pleading tone that sounded so off in her words, but he stopped and looked at her. Bereft of words, he could only nod his head.

"Thank you. I'm, I just... For the longest time, I've used you. I took from you, like so many others, ignorant of why or how, but I took from you strength and confidence and solace. I took and begged and borrowed and fed on it like a leech, and for that I'm sorry. I never... never thought to look beyond that smile and casual strength you always seemed to display." Her hand fell from his, and she herself slipped from the couch and to her knees. She bowed her head so low that it touched the ground at his feet. "I swore to serve you, to lend you my strength and make your will mine. I swore to you upon all that I was, and yet all I managed to do was take from you that which you offered and never tried to repay that. I have failed you, John Shepard."

The next thing she felt were his hands, upon her shoulders. She looked up, and saw him kneeled before her, that same broken look in his eyes, even as he half-smiled at her.

"Don't apologize, Samara. Please, don't. You haven't done anything wrong. So stand up and be at ease. I forgive you of any wrongdoing." His words were so absolute to her, so convicted, so well toned that they were too perfect. Too hollow.

"John... I..." She started, but he silenced her with a finger to her lips.

"I'm not worth your apologies, Samara. You haven't done anything wrong." She almost wept at the belief in his words.

"How?" She whispered, her head down even as she leaned into his hands.

"How what, Samara?" Came his quiet reply. She slumped into his arms, and let her folds press into his chest. Without a word, his arms wrapped around her back. She let a shudder pass through her body.

"How can you be so forgiving after all that's happened to you? How can you be so gentle after so much loss?" She whispered, and he simply ran his arm up and down her back, letting himself feel the ridges of her spine through the strange, synthetic armor that she always seemed to wear.

"I'm not, Samara. Not really. You know that." He said, quietly. He felt the woman's arms wrap around his waist, felt her sigh against him.

"But you are, John. You're the best of us." She whispered back, and no small part of the man felt the absolute belief in her words. He gave a soft smile, an ironic smile, and shook his head.

"I'm not, Samara. I'm not even human, any more. Not really." His tone belied weary acceptance of what he'd said, as if it were such an absolute fact that he could accept no other.

"You are, John. Don't talk like that. Please, you're..."

"A shadow of a dead man, Samara. Brought back to play puppet to a raving sycophant and his lackeys."

Samara wept at those words. She could feel her silvery tears falling from her eyes as she sobbed against Shepard, her arms around him, holding him as tightly as she could. He just held her, and she held him.

"You aren't, John." She said eventually, and he chuckled at the words.

"I am. You know, I used to believe in God, once. In an afterlife, a heaven and a hell. I don't, not any more, though. But I used to, a long, long time ago." He began, and from their position on the floor, the woman pressed into him, her head against his stomach as he spoke. She could feel his heartbeat through the thin cloth of his shirt, and the gentle wheeze of his every breath.

"What happened?" She asked, quietly. She felt his hand gently massaging her fringe, an odd but... comforting sensation.

"I died. And Cerberus brought me back. Back from the dead, but they forgot my soul along the way, you know? I figure that wherever it is, it's there, and once I die here, that's it. I'll be gone." His tone was sad, and she snuggled into him tighter, as if her presence could push away the darkness in his heart. A moment passed between the two, Samara unable to think of any reply that didn't sound shallow or stupid. Sometimes the silence was all you needed.

"Why are you here, Samara?" He asked, quietly. "Why did you come to me, why are you doing all of this?" Ah, the root of the question. Samara could only close her tired eyes and let off a soft sigh.

"Because I made a mistake." She said, and she could almost feel his confusion. "Several weeks ago, a man came to me and bore me his heart, and in my foolishness, I fled from him. I came to rectify that mistake."

"Ah. Why, Samara? What made you change your mind?" His words were silent, nearly so in the darkened room. She let off a soft chuckle.

"There was nothing that needed changing, John. I just... felt lost for a time." She said finally, tightening her grip on the man before her. She could almost feel the smile on his face, tired as it was. It was a sad thing to behold, really, and she took it for what it was.

"I know how that feels, Samara." She shut her eyes and let a soft trickle of tears fall.

"I know you do, John."

"There's a part of me that wants to die, Samara."

"I know, John."

"Then why?" Was all he asked in the pale blue light of the tank.

"Because a part of me wants to go with you."

"Is that how you knew?"

"Yes."

"Will you stay with me, Samara?"

"Yes."

"I love you, Samara."

"And I you, John."

And in the pale light, faces aglow in the darkness, they embraced, and their lips met for the first time.

_~END~_


End file.
